POSTCARDS FOR GANDHI

'Sahmat' celebrates 150 years of Gandhi's birth with a box of postcards painted by Indian contemporary artists and priced at Rs 500.

"The Postcards for Gandhi project (1994–95) was based on Mahatma Gandhi's famous practice of using inexpensive postcards to communicate with vast numbers of people," adds Ram Rahman the curator." First, artists led by Gulammohammed Sheikh organised a lino-print workshop at the M S University, Baroda.

Expanding on the idea, Vivan Sundaram, Ram Rahman and Shamshad invited 100 artists from across India to each make six different postcard-sized works that reflected their understanding of Gandhi's political leadership, philosophy, and relevance to contemporary India."

Postcards for Gandhi was one of Sahmat's first projects to engage a large group of artists around a single theme. The artists' works were shown in exhibitions in six cities, all opening on October 2, 1995, Gandhi's birthday. Each presentation included one original work by each of the participating artists, making six different exhibitions. All the works were available for purchase at a uniform price of Rs 1,000 each. The works were also printed as postcards.

These strategies of the simultaneous exhibition and low cost for artists' works, no matter the artist's stature, reflected Gandhi's egalitarian ethos. One work from each artist was also reproduced as a set of postcards and in a book, Addressing Gandhi, which included commissioned texts by historians, social scientists, art historians and artists that presented new scholarship on Gandhi's life and work.

Among best works are Atul Dodiya,Arpana Caur,Bhupen Khakhar,Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, Surendran Nair, Nalini Malani,Nilima Sheikh and many more.